TwilightPhoenix

5th Column in radio/newspaper missions too.

60% Explorer
47% Achiever
47% Killer
47% Social

I guess I'm almost a well-rounded gamer...

Hmmm, reminds me of when a 54 month Vet was trying to tell me Stamina worked in shapeshifted Kheld forms...

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it's not like there's a lot of people using Time Bomb in PVP who'd complain, is there?

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Ok, placed my bomb. Now, hopefully that Stalker will only try to AS me while I stand here at juuuust the right moment...

Ooo, I can finally reroll my FF/NRG as the FF/AR she was meant to be!

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Now THATS more like a soloing defender build. I note the use of both primary and secondary to boost survivability (detention field is a great tool solo).

Personally I'd have left sniper blast to later, but thats about it.

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I may have taken it later, considering it's only 3-slotted. I didn't remember the order I grabbed everything, I was just looking at my enhancement screen when I did it and told myself "Ok, this power needs to be put into the planner early enough to have this many slots with these enhancements..."



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Twilightphoenix:

An interesting build. Nifty demo. I'll point out, however, that the character has only 10-12% Defense, no resistance and half the damage output of the Scrapper without Criticals.
As I say, mine is something of a concept build, being an Iron Man homage, so the need for some significant melee ability had to be considered. It may not be optimal, but I consider it a flaw in the class if you have to build one specific way to be viable.

As I say, though, and interesting demonstration.

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15ish% defense, according to my Combat Attributes. As shown in the demo, I rely a lot on range, knockdown/back, and detention to make up for the lack of defense and resistance.

However, as a concept build, depending on what it is, you have to make sacrifices for performance for concept, or vice versa or find another way to hand wave them. For example, that toon in the demo is also a concept build. I got around her being able to Fly, which is outside her concept, by giving her rocket boots. I got around her lack of gun by giving her Energy Blast and mentioning in her bio that her gun was censored. Her lack of the ally-only shields on her solo build (she has a team build too) is a bit outside of her concept, but I wasn't dedicated to it enough to take two powers I wouldn't be able to use solo.

However, if you're looking for equal ranged/melee effectiveness (give or take) for you concept, may I recommend an Energy/Energy or AR/Energy Blaster? Those two would probably fit your homage better, would do superior damage, have superior melee capabilities, and be a faster soloist. You would, however, loose your team buffing capabilities and self mez-protection, but I don't recall Iron Man dropping force fields on anyone or flying around in a big bubble (granted, I only saw the recent movie).

A few random things that would be nice for Custom Critters to have access to or changed, in no particular order. I suspect some of these might not be possible, but I don't know which would be. So, might as well throw them all out there.


1) Able to set various "flags" for critters. You know, stuff like robotic, ghost, fae, clockwork, etc. All the various flags in the game that causes some powers to have additional/different behavior with the critter. This way, we can have our custom robots actually take damage from EM Pulse like the normal robots do, for example.

2) Access to the zombie movement. It'd be nice if I could make my zombies lumber and shamble like zombies instead of rushing the players with perfect posture. I "think" there's other movement animations too humanoid mobs get, but none come to mind at the moment.

3) Allow custom critters to take one power pool and/or one APP/PPP. We can already give them Fly, but this would let us also give them Hover, Air Superiority, and Group Fly if we so chose. Or any other travel power. Or really, lots of other powers too. I put the limit of one simply because that seems to be the most we'd get for whatever reasons.

4) Let us choose what ranged attack melee sets get, or skip it if their other powerset is a ranged one. It's very annoying that my Assault Rifle/Martial Arts military soldiers are running around tossing shuriken when they have a gun. Or another example, if I decided to be egotistical and made one of my toons, let's say a Katana/Invuln/Darkness Scrapper, into an AV to beat around players, I'd like to be able to give him a dark blast to match his APP instead of a shuriken (assuming we don't get APP/PPPs down the road to begin with).

5) Can we get Mending Mitos back please? I know people farmed them like mad, but that's not why I want them. I don't care if they come back with zero rewards, I was using them, along with the other Mitos for a particular mission to create a Hami-esque battle with an AV. That's no longer possible and I can't finish that arc, at least not in the way I envisioned. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was using them in a legitimate fashion either.

How do I get the Mac client to play back demos? The Wiki isn't helpful and there's only one topic I found on this sub-forum that contained a link to a topic with instructions... except said topic has since been purged, making it useless. So, how do I go about playing them back?

Well, he wants proof. I was bored, so here it is to give: a demorecord of my level 26 FF/NRG doing just fine solo on a mission. Probably not my best run ever since I was rusty with the toon, having not played her in awhile due to Dual Pistols being announced (her concept is a FF/AR Defender, which, at present, isn't possible, but I'll settle for Dual Pistols too), but I do it without getting killed repeatedly and little trouble. Yes, I have to run and rest once, but stuff like that happens regardless of AT in the lower levels.

Anyway, link: http://www.savefile.com/files/2154940 It's about 2.3 megabytes.

I've never done a demorecord before, nor watched one, and I remember hearing the interface not showing up. So, if I just stand there dumbly for a few seconds at the start instead of showing the enhancement screen, here's her [u]solo[u] build. I doubt it's "optimum" for her level, but it works. Also, the power picks may or may not be in the right order.

+---------------------------------------------
+ Built with SuckerPunch's Online Planner
+ http://www.cohplanner.com
+---------------------------------------------
Name: N/A
Level: 26
Archetype: Defender
Primary: Force Field
Secondary: Energy Blast
+---------------------------------------------
01 => Power Bolt ==> Dam(1),Acc(3),Dam(3),Acc(7),Dam(9),EndCost(9)
01 => Personal Force Field ==> Rech(1)
02 => Power Blast ==> Dam(2),Acc(5),Dam(5),Acc(7),Dam(11),EndCost(13)
04 => Force Bolt ==> Acc(4)
06 => Hover ==> Empty(6)
08 => Detention Field ==> Rech(8)
10 => Power Burst ==> Dam(10),Acc(11),Dam(13),Acc(19),Dam(21),EndCost(23)
12 => Dispersion Bubble ==> DefBuff(12),DefBuff(15),DefBuff(15),EndCost(17)
14 => Fly ==> Flight(14)
16 => Sniper Blast ==> Dam(16),Acc(17),Acc(19)
18 => Swift ==> Empty(18)
20 => Health ==> Heal(20),Heal(21)
22 => Stamina ==> EndMod(22),EndMod(23)
24 => Aim ==> Rech(24),Rech(25),Rech(25)
26 => Repulsion Bomb ==> Acc(26)
+---------------------------------------------
01 => Sprint ==> Empty(1)
01 => Brawl ==> Empty(1)
02 => Rest ==> Empty(1)

Try using your second build to make a solo build for your FF/NRG. Skip the team shields, use only powers that benefit you, slots your attacks heavily, and get AIM. Trust me, it works wonders on my FF/NRG who is only level 26 and has no issues soloing a mission, even if it has bosses. And she is only relying on Dispersion and Knockback/down for protection, as well as PFF for a panic button.

You know, that horse everyone beats... it has to be an undead horse. Otherwise I don't see why it needs to be beaten so often to keep it down.

Just to confirm, my previous theory about co-op zones was wrong (managed to light up a bunch of Romans attacking a Brute on my team while I was on a Controller). It's definitely the MA. Though, I wonder if getting confused would work, as Meldash suggested. I'll need to try this...

I remember once I joined a struggling team on my level 50 Rad/Sonic/Dark while waiting for my friends to finish up a safeguard they just started so they could swap and we could all go slap a TF silly. They asked if I was a healer and I told them I had one weak PBAoE heal. Instant invited. After I joined I went in, noticed they were almost done with a mob and fine, so I gave into my Scrapper tendencies and ran to the next one, hit my debuffs, EMP Pulse, Soul Drain, Aim, my nuke, a couple of blues, and then cleaned up the mob before they reached it (I think they were mostly lowbies, hence their slowness).

Next thing I get was "I thought you were a healer?" I simply replied "I have over 20 other powers too". Hopefully they learned something.

Also recently, got into an argument with someone about the usefulness of a dedicated healer. After a bit, found out he was referring to a well-played Defender and I was referring to a poorly played Empath. So, kind of looks like some people are just calling Defenders "healers" in general, even if they don't heal.

I've noticed this behavior last night too. In fact, I was targeting through the oil slick throwing my Apprentice Charm at the mobs. I'm not sure if it's the MA being buggy or being in an co-op environment being buggy. Both seem plausible, especially the latter if all MA missions are considered co-op by the game, even if it's impossible to get a villain there to begin with.

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No it wouldn't. You don't have to leave the AE building to be able to drop PITA waste of time missions.

None of the characters I have made after we got the drop mission feature has Wincott or any of those other useless npc's on their contact list.

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True, but you know how sometimes you drop a mission and then the contact gives you another junk one in the same vein. Besides, how many players who don't know about enhancements would know they can drop a mission?

A less serious alternative came to mind. Make the holocontacts force all those missions other contacts force on us! You know, go talk to Wincott, go talk to the PvP liasons, talk to Temblor, etc. etc. Make these unavoidable. Then MA players will have no choice but to leave the AE to talk to these people.

Not a good idea and not seriously suggested, but it WOULD work.

I don't care about farmers as long as they leave me alone, but sheesh! Are you all really too lazy to exit your mission, talk to your holocontact, walk over to the terminal, get the same mission again, and repeat it? You're walking what, maybe 10-20 yards in-game and spending maybe 10 seconds (loading time aside)? I'm going to say no to this without even bothering to come up with logical reasons of why it would never be implemented.

Slash I rarely see people use. In fact, I may be the only one who uses it. My BS/SR is already soft-capped, so I didn't need Parry anymore, therefore I dropped it for Slash for more damage. Maybe once I finish slotting that toon I may not even need Slash anymore, but that remains to be seen.

But, if you're not soft-capped without it, I'd recommend Parry over Slash any day. As for Katana... can't speak for it.

I know, but it'd be hilarious, for reasons you just described. At least it'd work with Rooted still and maybe you'd see stoners using the other armors for once.

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I have no idea what could be an alternative to Granite Armor that anyone would actually take.

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Speed Boost?

I didn't say you were saying they couldn't. Just decided to do that so you could move Broadsword to "primaries that are less common".

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Primaries that I've never heard of anyone using for AV soloing: <snip> Broadsword

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Now you have.

Granted, I haven't finished getting all my IOs, so she's the only one I've taken out. I do have the damage, just not the consistency I want yet.

I've noticed that if you sometimes shoot stuff at the Oil Slick before igniting it, it can cause it to light when it normally refuses to, or vice versa. The same sequence to get a stubborn slick to light always works until you zone or log. For example, if you can convince it to light by shooting it with glue arrow, poison gas arrow, and then your ignition attack, it will always light when you do that (unless something else hits it during that chain). On teams with fire/energy cones/aoes, this can cause some randomness to making it light, at least in my experience. Your mileage may vary.

Usually I have to manually click my auto-skills once or twice to get them to work. Zoning usually helps too. I've noticed going into Wents seems to cause them to quit going off automatically.

Just make it like the AE Accolade. Make it a macro that lets you bring up the arena terminal screen from anywhere. Call it an Arena Commlink. That way, there's no worrying about it blowing up while you're trying to set up a match and having to wait for it to recharge or travel to the arena itself.